The Steamboating Forum

Hello World!

This is my first card board layout of the teak deck.

Looking good,

Not to add any pressure but we know you're up to the challenge.

Here is my favorite deck. From an electric powered boat at the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle. Look really carefully at the center "spine" and how the deck is fitted. I think the joints parallel the gunwale makes for a much better looking deck (And a lot more work?)



Cheers

Ken

Although the deck above is prettier, it is still 'incorrectly' fitted- in a deck with a joggled king plank the planks should taper so that if the deck were one continuous surface from stem to stern each plank would be full length. On top of that, having a joggled covering board on the counter is a little unusual, but to have the planks terminating in a 90deg. butt joint, rather than joggled to match the king plank and coaming covering boards is all wrong. But that's just my opinion!

In a deck laid for and aft, as Rainer is proposing, the planks can be either joggled into the covering board (traditional way) or cut to butt upto the covering board (modern way) as Rainer has drawn. I would suggest you think about installing a king plank, as well as looking more traditional it provides a wider base for fittings should you decide in the future to install a mooring bitt or similar with a wide base, having the fixings drilled through the joints would be a crime punishable by death (or similar...). I would definitely suggest you put a covering board on the forward edge of the coaming though, having seen plenty done with covering boards and without, having one finishes the deck off far better.

Of course there is another way, and one that is very rarely used these days, but would actually suit your launch very well, and that is an uncaulked taper fitted wide planked deck.

Hopefully this URL will have worked;

http://www.steamboatassociation.org.uk/ ... 003400.jpg

Greg

Hello Boys,
thanks for all the deck-info and hints. Will follow this later...

First I materialized the deck construction in 6.5 mm plywood:




Than I supported the deck with a fillet for more strength and better gluing of the coaming:




Next was bending and pre-shaping the coaming - everything only fixed by bar clamps and nails yet

nice progress

87gn@tahoe wrote:nice progress

Thank you!

Today I finally glued the left side to the side deck. First I reinforced the side deck with little ribs and painted the "hidden" parts.


Than everything went together with epoxy and bar clamps. The supporting wood forms a nice curve and will be removed after gluing.


At first sight the result looks good...

First boiler mounting test...

Excellent.

In the moment I try to simulate the tiller or better stick stearing by (with? in? english wording please) CAD.

The green lever is assembled with two ball joints. The rest of the joints are from ordinary pivot type.


My questions:
1)
What is the American and/or English boat direction for pulling the lever?

I will use two sticks - one at the left and the other at the right side of the boat!


2)
What is a good (proven) stick travel at the top to balance a good feeling for holding the course with not to much hand force nor needing to much moving with the arm?

Practitioners first please!

"With" maybe better; or "in"; Rainer, either would do. You worry too much, we understand. English is very flexible.

I still admire how you whip up these CAD drawings. I am still trying to understand the basics, and am much quicker with a pencil and paper.